We all seek immortality in some way. Death has been one of the prime terrors haunting us since humans first started realizing that every living thing dies and death is permanent. After all, no one wants to face the end of everything that one has been, is, and will be. Indeed, a key feature of many religions is a belief that death is not the end, that there is an afterlife where we will all live forever. In some religions, in the afterlife evil is punished and good rewarded. Even if, as seems most likely, death is simply the end, and the time after death is just like the time before we were born (or, more properly, before our first memories), something that seems relatively benign just thinking about it, emotionally we still don’t want it. Being human, I get it, particularly now that I’m on the wrong side of 50 and, unless I’m far more long-lived than my genes are likely to permit, have considerably less life to look forward to than the lifetime I’ve already lived. I also realize that the number of people who are remembered long after they are gone by anyone outside of their family and friends is exceedingly small—and even that memory fades rapidly among family members. As the succeeding generation dies off, direct memory of the generation that spawned it disappears. I get it. Fifty years from now, it’s likely that all that will remain of my existence will be some scientific papers and a faint memory held by my nieces and nephews and maybe, if I’m lucky, a few of my youngest readers.

I don’t, however, get cryonics.

Detroit, like many large cities, has a free weekly “alternative” newspaper, The Metro Times. This week’s issue features this cover: